DESIGN OF AN FPGA-BASED RADIATION TOLERANT AGENT FOR WORLDFIP FIELDBUS

CERN makes extensive use of the WorldFIP fieldbus interface in the LHC and other accelerators in the pre-injectors chain. Following the decision of the provider of the components to stop the developments in this field and foreseeing the potential problems in the subsequent support, CERN decided to purchase the design information of these components and in-source the future developments using this technology. The first in-house design concerns a replacement for the MicroFIP chip whose last version was manufactured in an IC feature size found to be more vulnerable to radiation of high energy particles than the previous versions. nanoFIP is a CERN design based on a Flash FPGA implementing a subset of the functionality allowed by the communication standard, fitting the requirements of the different users and including the robustness against radiation as a design constraint. The development presented involved several groups at CERN working together in the framework of the Open Hardware Repository collaboration, and aiming at maximizing the interoperability and reliability of the final product.